It is a testimony to the love of symmetry
and balance which evolved its style....in pure simplicity of rectangles its
beauty is achieved. It is a pyramid mounting in terraces, five of them ...Below
Bak-Keng lays all the world of mystery, the world of the Khmer, more mysterious
ever under its cover of impenetrable verdure. Phnom Bakheng is located 1,30
meters (4,265 feet) north of Angkor Wat and 400 meters (1,312 feet) south of
Angkor Thom. Enter and leave Phnom Bakheng by climbing a long steep path with
some steps on the east side of the monument (height 67 meters, 220 feet) In the
1960 this summit was approached by elephant and, according to a French visitor,
the ascent was "a promenade classic and very agreeable" Tip: Arrive at the summit just before sunset for a panoramic view of
Angkor and its environs. The golden hues of the setting sun on this vista are a
memorable sight. When Frenchman Henri Mouhot stood at this point in 1859 he
wrote in his diary: 'Steps.. lead to the top of the mountain, whence is to be
enjoyed a view so beautiful and extensive, that it is not surprising that these
people , who have shown so much taste in their buildings, should have chosen it
for a site. It is possible to see: the five towers of Angkor Wat in the west,
Phnom Krom to the southwest near the Grand Lake, Phnom Bok in the northeast,
Phnom Kulen in the east, and the West Baray. Phnom Bakheng was built in late
ninth to early tenth century by King Yasovarman dedicated to Siva (Hindi).BACKGROUND
After Yasovarman became king in 889, he founded his own capital, Tasoharapura,
Northwest of Roluos and built Bakheng as his state temple. The sites known today
as Angkor and thus Bakheng is sometimes called 'the first Angkor '. A square
wall; each side of which is 4 kilometers (2.5 miles) long, surrounded the city.
A natural hill in the center distinguished the site.A DAY ON THE HILL OF THE GODS
This is most solitary place in all Angkor and the pleasantest. If it was truly
the Mount Meru of the gods, then they chose their habitation well. But if the
Khmers had chanced to worship the Greek pantheon instead of that of India, they
would surely have built on Phnom Bakheng a temple to Apollo; for it is at
sunrise and sunset that you feel its most potent charm. To steal out of the
Bungalow an hour before the dawn, and down the road that skirts the faintly
glimmering moat of Angkor Wat before it plunges into the gloom of the forest;
and then turn off, feeling your way across the terrace between the guardian
lions (who grin amiably at you as you turn the light of your torch upon them);
then clamber up the steep buried stairway on the eastern face of the hill,
across the plateau and up the five flights of steps, to emerge from the
enveloping forest on to the cool high terrace with the stars above you is a
small pilgrimage whose reward is far greater than its cost in effort.
Here at the summit it is very still. The darkness has lost its intensity; and
you stand in godlike isolation on the roof of a world that seems to be floating
in the sky, among stars peering faintly through wisps of filmy cloud. The dawn
comes so unobtrusively that you are unaware of it, until all in a moment you
realize that the world is no longer dark. The sanctuaries and altars on the
terrace have taken shape about you as if by enchantment; and far below, vaguely
as yet but gathering intensity with every second, the kingdom of the Khmers and
the glory thereof spreads out on every side to the very confines of the earth;
or so it may well have seemed to the King-god when he visited his sanctuary how
many dawns ago.
Soon, in the east, a faint pale gold light is diffused above a grey bank of
cloud flat-topped as a cliff, that lies across the far horizon; to which smooth
and unbroken as the surface of a calm sea, stretches the dark ocean of forest,
awe-inspiring in its tranquil immensity. To the south the view is the same, save
where along low hill, the shape of a couchant cat, lies in the monotonous sea of
foliage like an island. Westward, the pearl-grey waters of the great Baray, over
which a thin mist seems to be suspended, turn silver in the growing light, and
gleam eerily in their frame of overhanging trees; but beyond them, too, the
interminable forest flows on to meet the sky. It is only on the north and
northeast that a range of mountains the Dangrengs, eighty miles or so away
breaks the contour of the vast, unvarying expanse; and you see in imagination on
its eastern rampart the almost inaccessible temple of Prah Vihear.
Immediately below you there is morning is windless; but one after the other, the
tops of the trees growing on the steep sides of the Phnom sway violently to and
fro, and a fussy chattering announces that the monkeys have awakened to a new
day. Near the bottom of the hill on the south side, threadlike wisps of smoke
from invisible native hamlets mingle with patches of mist. And then, as the
light strengthens, to the southeast, the tremendous towers of Angkor Wat push
their black mass above the grey-green monotony of foliage, and there comes a
reflected gleam from a corner of the moat not yet overgrown with weeds. But of
the huge city whose walls are almost at your feet, and of all the other great
piles scattered far and near over the immense plains that surround you, not a
vestige is to be seen. There must surely be enchantment in a forest that knows
how to keep such enormous secrets from the all – Seeing Eye of the sun.
In the afternoon the whole scene is altered. The god-like sense of solitude is
the same; but the cool, grey melancholy of early morning has been transformed
into a glowing splendor painted in a thousand shades of orange and amber, henna
and gold. To the west, the bray, whose silvery waters in the morning had all the
inviting freshness of a themes backwater, seems now, by some occult process to
have grown larger, and spreads, gorgeous but sinister, a sheet of burnished
copper, reflecting the fiery glow of the waste ring sun. Beyond it, the forest,
a miracle of color, flows on to be lost in the splendid conflagration; and to
the north and east, where the light is less fierce, you can see that the smooth
surface of the sea of treetops wears here and there all the tints of an English
autumn woodland: a whole gamut of flowing crimson flaring scarlet, chestnut
brown, and brilliant yellow; for even these tropic trees must 'winter
By this light you can see, too, what was hidden in the morning that for a few
miles towards the south, the sweep of forest is interrupted by occasional
patches of cultivation; rice fields, dry and golden at this season of the year,
where cattle and buffaloes are grazing.
As for the Great Wat, which in the morning had showed itself an indeterminate
black mass against the dawn; in this light, and from this place, it is
unutterably magical. You have not quite an aerial view the Phnom is not high
enough for that; and even if it were, the ever encroaching growth of trees on
its steep sides shuts out the view of the Wat's whole immense plan. But you can
see enough to realize something of the superb audacity of the architects who
dared to embark upon a single plan measuring nearly a mile square. You point of
view is diagonal; across the north west corner of the moat to the soaring
lotus-tip of the central sanctuary you can trace the perfect balance of every
faultless live. Worshipful for its beauty, bewildering in its stupendous size
there is no other point from